Today we focus our spotlight on Shadow a very talented developer from the NextGen scene. Best know for his great work on the Playstation emulator PCSX and famous for making the first Playstation 2 emulator, PCSX2. The amount of progress he has accomplished along with his fellow developers has blown us all away. His commitment and dedication to the project has given us a lot joy and excitement, especially when there is so many new games working and progress being made. I am very lucky to be a good friend of Shadow and I am happy he is willing to open up to us with the following interview.

Interview

Q : What was your first coding experience for emulation?A : First coding experience was with pcsx-a psx emu. Was working on that with nocomp and a bit later linuzappz joined and made pcsx what it is today. A great psx emu :)

Q : What interested you in PS2 Emulation?A : That noone did it before? I always wanted to emulate something that noone ever emulate. Was quite a challenge ;)

Q : What do you think about the current state of the emulation scene as a whole?A : I think that emulation scene is somehow dead. 99% of the systems have been emulated and there are a few more left that need powerful pcs to run which is why next generation is that hard.. (debugging a next gen emu with 4fps isn't that easy )

Q : What do you think about the current state of the NextGen scene?A : cxbx, dolphin, dolwin, icarus, pcsx2, nsx2 very promising emus :) . Can't wait to see more progress to them

Q : How do you feel about the response you have received so far for your projects?A : Most of the response is good. Seems that lamers doesn't exist today as much as they were at the time of psemu pro,psyke, or ultrahle

Q : What is your best experience when it comes to Emulation?A : Watch ps2 bios running at pcsx2. Never believed it that it was going to work :)

Q : What was your worst experience when it comes to Emulation?A : When my HDD destroyed and i lost my almost complete psx arcade emu. :(

Q : Are you currently working on any other projects besides PCSX2?A : Hmm i have another WIP emu project but i haven't worked on that lately. All i can tell is that is a Next generation emu

Q : Does the amount of lame request ever make you second guess what you are currently doing?A : As i already told there aren't many lamers nowaday.. I only receive 10 lame mails every day. At pcsx1 days i was receiving about 50 so things seems a bit better :)

Q : What is the lamest request you have every received?A : something like "tell me how to run FFX iso on pcsx2." or "where can i find ffx rom"

Q : What is the nicest complement you have received?
"you rock. very nice progress, keep up the good work"

Q : Could you give us some information regarding the current state of your projects?A : Well pcsx2 0.6 is about to released in a few weeks. We have improved the compatibility a lot. Many games now start to show more and some of them are actually playable althought speed is slow..

Q : Do you ever plan on working on another emulation project after PCSX2? If so what would interest you and challenge you?A : Hmm maybe PSP. I heard that uses MIPS R4000 cpus nothing that hard. Looking forward to learn more about it's specifications

Q : Are you satisfied with the work you have done up to this point?A : No. I think i can do more if only had time. Life is very demanding nowadays..

Q : Does the progress of your projects surpass all of your expectations so far? Or do you think you would have been further along in development?A : Even running the bios to pcsx2 was a big surprise to me. I actually thought that we wasn't able to do that. But now i learned that we can expect everything from emulation ;0

Q : Who else do you currently work with on your projects?A : it is truly luck that people that i am working on my projects are very talented programmers. Linuzappz,asadr,goldfinger,florin are truly good programmers and they rock :)

Q : How much have they influenced you and how much have they improved your work and vice versa?A : Well i maybe started pcsx2 but without linuzappz,asadr,goldfinger,florin i might not even reached the 10% of what pcsx2 is today.

Q : After you have moved on from the scene what do you want to be most remembered for?A : About pcsx2 i believe. Was the biggest challenge.

Q : Could you provide us with an teasers of things to come for your projects?A : Hmm gt3 is what i wanna fix now . Also perhaps FFX . But i guess only time will tell :)

Q : One last thing is there anything you would like to say or anybody you would like to thank?A : Wanna thanks pcsx2 team (linuzappz, asadr, goldfinger, florin) i love that guys very much !
Keith for interview and all his support
Bobbi, martin, ckemu, snake, vex, zezu, belmont, parotaku, nachbrenner, elly, moomoomoo, ector, f|res and everyone i forgot :P